Your small business needs a website because people are ditching their phone directories and local print publications in favor of online sources? The reality is, quickly opening a browser and conducting a search is so much easier than finding a directory and flipping through it’s voluminous pages. Almost all major search engines are pushing their local search features and if you are a small business serving your local market, then you are missing big time, as this article rightly puts, by not having a website for your business.
The advantages of a website are:
- It is always there, 24×7 and if you have enabled ecommerce features then people can shop on your website round-the-clock.
- All of a sudden you expand your market.
- There is no limit to what you want to say; you have all the space in the world.
- You can update your website whenever you feel like.
- You don’t have to maintain a physical inventory.
- …this list goes on and on.
The importance of website content
One of the greatest strengths of your website is of course, your content: what you say to your visitors. When it comes to your website, communication is of supreme importance. There are two primary reasons why most websites fail to generate business — they don’t have a well-defined business strategy and they don’t have good content.
Being a content writer/provider and an online copywriter this is the first thing I notice when I visit a new website — how well the inherent message is conveyed. You may decide to disagree, but your content can really make or break your business, because it’s the only way of communicating with your visitors. Although I may sound like saying this from writing point of view, content basically means anything you publish on your website: text, images, videos and audios. The written text may act as a primary communication tool, or a secondary communication tool. Many graphic designers and web designers for instance simply post visuals and don’t care much about textual information and it works for those who have already created a brand presence using their own contacts or social networking tools. But if you want to draw traffic from search engines then you must give serious thought to some well-crafted, targeted content.